Pages

Sunday, April 10, 2016

America's Election Shame

Often others are able to see through the ideological
mystification of capitalist politics. A member has drawn the blog’s attention
to this response from a friend to an article about the American election
campaign at Spiegel Online: America's Election Shame.

He recommends his friend's reply to it for its clarity. His friend writes:

"Good article… and it’s absolutely true and getting said over
here that the Republicans are simply reaping what they have sown….

But in a strange way, the Sanders / Clinton debate on the
Democratic side, which is not gutter, represents the other side of the coin for
the same trend….

It’s the trend itself that needs to be clearer…. What I mean
is …

The Republicans are deeply divided… Trump is
moderate/anti-Republican on many issues such as keeping Social Security, gay
rights, etc. He is anti-free trade – believes in tariffs and other
restrictions, which spits in the face of the Republican free enterprisers…At
the same time, he goes over the top with the racism, sexism, and bigotry
fostered and used by the Republicans over the past few decades.

And he has a lot of support… particularly among white
lower-income men, but not limited to them…

Meanwhile, the Democrats are also seriously divided…. A
great deal of the party base, young people in particular, love Sanders, while
the establishment loves Hilary. Her claim to real-person support is mainly with
a huge majority of black people – because of the history from Bill and her
going back to his governorship … But even that may be eroding…. There’s a lot of talk, a lot of people who
say that they would vote for Bernie but would not vote for Hilary under any
conditions…

And Bernie’s main point is that the policies of BOTH the
Repubs and the Demos, with all the “free trade” agreements and favorable
treatment of the rich banks and corporations – policies including the Clintons
and Obama – have just served to make rich people richer and put more Ameircans
in deep trouble…. He makes a living pounding on the fact that the richest
people buy and control government in this country.

In other words, the common thread for both Sanders and Trump is
speaking to the deep anger and frustration of people in this country. [our
emphasis]

The main difference seems to be that the pro-Trump
supporters seem to blame immigrants, people of color, Muslims, uppity women,
foreign countries such as China and Mexico…. While the pro-Sanders progressives
blame Rich and the politicians they have bought.

Where and how this all plays out … I don’t know … But we may
be at a time where things are brewing and moving some major re-alignment of
forces…. may be some big changes over the next few years… In what direction, I
don’t know … The whole role of terrorism and how that will play into it, the
continued or halted disintegration of peoples’ quality of life … too many
unknowns for me … but we’re entering a major transition period of some sort, I
think…"